UN shuts down air service in Nigeria over poor funding

The UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) has ended its fixed-wing air service in Nigeria over lack of funding.

The spokesperson for the UNHAS Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric, disclosed this during the noon press briefing at the UN Headquarters in New York, the United States.

UNHAS, which is operated by the World Food Programme (WFP), had to end their fixed-wing air service in Nigeria last week due to a lack of funding.

Dujarric said: “For nine years, the service has transported humanitarian staff, medical supplies, and critical cargo to and from the epicentre of the crisis in Borno and Yobe States.

“In a country that has experienced unending conflict for the past 16 years of conflict, road transport remains extremely dangerous and air transport is essential.”

WFP had warned that it might be compelled to suspend all emergency food and nutrition aid for 1.3 million people in northeast Nigeria at the end of July.

WFP Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Margot van der Velden, while briefing UN Correspondents in New York, painted a dire humanitarian situation in Nigeria.

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Velden said WFP urgently needed 130 million dollars to sustain emergency food and nutrition operations in Northeast Nigeria for six months.

She stated: “Due to the severe funding cuts that the World Food Programme is facing, we have exhausted our food and nutrition resources.

“And at the beginning of August, we will have to face the heartbreaking reality of having to suspend our operations for the populations in northeast Nigeria.

“And so our teams will have to tell the population that they no longer will receive aid, not because there is no need, but because there are no resources for that assistance.”

She expressed concerns that if life-saving assistance ended, millions of vulnerable people could face impossible choices.

Velden added that the vulnerable would have to endure increasingly severe hunger, migrate or even risk possible exploitation by extremist groups in the region.

Velden, however, commended the Nigerian government for its support aimed at addressing the humanitarian situation in the northeast.

“I also would like to say that the government of Nigeria is the largest financier of this emergency response now in the northeast of Nigeria,” she said.

The Star